This policy brief presents a professional consensus regarding the dimensions of teaching quality and the issues that need to be addressed if California is to ensure high quality instruction for all students. It is based on the work of an expert panel of education stakeholders who reviewed research, met with outside experts, and discussed in depth…

In the present study we used bayesian latent growth modeling to asses the impact of a one-semester creativity course on the development of engineering students' creativity scripts. We compared a treatment (N = 52) and a control (N = 42) group with respect to individual differences in initial status and in rate of change. Results revealed that the…

According to the recent Nation's Report Card, 12th-graders failed to produce gains on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) despite earning better grades on average. One possible explanation is that 12th-graders were not motivated taking the NAEP, which is a low-stakes test. We develop three Bayesian IRT mixture models to…

The original grounded theory was derived from a sample of junior and senior science and engineering majors. The current study tested the original grounded theory with a new set of juniors and seniors who were, in contrast to the original sample, primarily studying the liberal arts. In this qualitative analysis, the authors sought to determine if…

This article reviews current methods for evaluating models in the cognitive sciences, including theoretically based approaches, such as Bayes factors and minimum description length measures; simulation approaches, including model mimicry evaluations; and practical approaches, such as validation and generalization measures. This article argues…

This article focuses on the accuracy of satellite data, which may then be used in wave power applications. The satellite data are compared to data from wave buoys, which are currently considered to be the most accurate of the devices available for measuring wave characteristics. This article presents an analysis of satellite- (Topex/Poseidon) and…

Griffiths, Christian, and Kalish (this issue) present an iterative-learning paradigm applying a Bayesian model to understand inductive biases in categorization. The authors argue that the paradigm is useful as an exploratory tool to understand inductive biases in situations where little is known about the task. It is argued that a theory developed…

The authors present a Bayesian framework for understanding how adults and children learn the meanings of words. The theory explains how learners can generalize meaningfully from just one or a few positive examples of a novel word's referents, by making rational inductive inferences that integrate prior knowledge about plausible word meanings with…

Causal learning requires integrating constraints provided by domain-specific theories with domain-general statistical learning. In order to investigate the interaction between these factors, the authors presented preschoolers with stories pitting their existing theories against statistical evidence. Each child heard 2 stories in which 2 candidate…

Discusses Melvin R. Novick's work in the area of Bayesian statistics. This area of statistics was seen as a powerful scientific tool that allows educational researchers to have a better understanding of their data. (RB)

An analytic expression is derived for the posterior distribution of the bivariate correlation given a data set that contains missing values on both variables. Interval estimates of the unknown correlation are then computed in terms of the highest posterior density regions. A sampling study illustrates the procedure. (SLD)

Data from three studies were used to investigate whether the establishment of a no-smoking agreement is related to lower odds of adolescent smoking. The prevalence of a no-smoking agreement was first explored by using a national sample involving 4,501 Dutch adolescents. Second, data from a longitudinal study among 595 early adolescents and their…

Effective literacy teachers share a variety of instructional traits such as the ability to kidwatch, pedagogically reflect, and make informed decisions based on ill-structured and complex data. Teacher educators face the challenge of helping preservice teachers develop such traits so as to prepare them to be successful literacy teachers. One…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is twofold. The first purpose is to utilize a new methodology (Bayesian networks) for aggregating various quality indicators to measure the overall quality of care in nursing homes. The second is to provide new insight into the relationships that exist among various measures of quality and how such measures…

In tests with time limits, items at the end are often not reached. Usually, the pattern of missing responses depends on the ability level of the respondents; therefore, missing data are not ignorable in statistical inference. This study models data using a combination of two item response theory (IRT) models: one for the observed response data and…